Comments

Comment by Tarrek

The looks of this belt matches very nicely with the druid 25-man Tier 7 set.

Comment by KelvinWoW

Some facts you have missed...

I was taking in account the DPS was hit-capped (sorry if i havent mentioned it and sorry if i havent considered you were talking about that belt).

The Leash of Heedless Magic is a direct stat upgrade (except for the armor prof). If you dont believe me, give it a try at the Item Comparator.

The main reason why Spirit isnt even close as a DPS stat is because it has other benefits (Spirit was never meant to be a DPS stat). While DPS-raiding is about pulling a lot of dmg, you need to make it also sustained and this belt can give out some balance between damage flow and raw DPS.

The Plush Sash of Guzbah is very good for raw DPS, considering the hit. But you wont spec for more hit if you are alreay hitcapped ofc.

Comment by Tequima

I currently have this belt, but am looking at changing it for the Hateful Gladiator's Belt of Dominance simply as this has a key stat for Balance Druids of 36 Crit. Yes I will lose haste, and 15 SP (mitigated by the 9SP I can add back in through adding a Royal Twighlight Opal +9 Spell Power +3 mana every 5 seconds. As Spirit was seriously nerfed in the last patch (3.1.3) it is much less important than before, even if I do gain spell power from it. Re-adding a blacksmithing gem socket will enable me to add back in the +20 hit yellow gem.

Why crit? Simply by comparing my stats to other balance druids who are out-DPSing me by a factor of 2:3 or more, the main differences are Crit and hit. I have more haste and more SP. I have 18% Crit compared to their 22-25%+. Try comparing my stats to Mombe on WoW Heroes. Recount shows a miss rate of 0.3% on Naxx last quarter + Sapph + Kel, and I am only 47 below hit cap according to be.imba.

I will also be able to benefit from Eclipse proccing more and will change my talents accordingly (see my blog Moon Touched on Curse for a discussion of why I put points in IFF and Owlkin Frenzy instead).

Of course some of the DPS difference may be due to the high latency I get in 25-mans (see technical forums on wow-Europe) from what seems to be an Nvidia graphics card issue, with FPS dropping from 25 to 5. Or the lag spikes from Virgin Media's connection to Blizzard via Telia.net (see tech forums) with spikes of 100-267ms, particularly after 10pm and regular disconnects at midnight...